What are the Best Sites to Learn About Developing Android Apps?

Android App Development has quickly become one of the biggest industries in the world. In fact, in the third quarter of last year, the number of Android smartphones that have been shipped reached 211.6 million, equaling 81% of allsmartphone shipments.

That’s right. Of the 10 people you see using a smartphone, 8 of them are on an Android device.

That means that 80% of those in the market for apps are on Android devices. And that means if you want to grab yourself a piece of the Android App pie – and maybe even leave your job in the process – you need to learn how to todevelop Android Apps.

So where do you start? At the fundamentals.

Java

Java programming is the bread and butter of Android development. Before you jump headlong into Android, it would be best to learn some Java – just enough to get yourself into trouble. Another thing, Java is a crucial part of web-development. Learn enough Android, and your skills will translate well into web-development (and vice versa) but that’s another post for another time.

If you want to learn just enough to get you started in Java, you could probably get what you need by going through on or both ofthese fine beginnertutorials. If you decide you’d like to go a little deeper, Thinking in Java will likely be one of the only Java books you’ll ever need to buy.

After you’ve gotten your share of Java, it’s time to get into the meat of development.

Android Development

By now you should have enough Java experience to have a solid foundation – a very basic understanding of coding and Java syntax. Your next step should be to check out a few tutorials that show you how to build a simple app – the simpler, the better. A good place to start is Android Developer’s Getting Started page. TheNewBoston YouTube channel has an entire playlist devoted to Android development, which stretches all the way from installing Eclipse and the Android SDK to submitting an app to the marketplace (and building an app, of course).

Now, after you’ve built a simple app or two, you should spread your learning out a little and start exploring other, more in depth resources. Vogella has a large library of tutorials that touch the more elementary topics and more in-depth and advanced topics. The AndriodBootcamp Series 2012 is a video series of live-recordedAndriodBootcamp Sessions. While the information might be a little outdated, the series will lead to insights on topics that other resources tend to skip over, such as content providers, security, and system services. Treehouse and Lynda are both subscription based services that house large collections of video tutorials for many topics. Subscribing to them allows access to their entire library of video courses which you can complete at your own pace.

So there you have it! Follow these resources and I guarantee that you will have the technical skill to start developing your own Android Apps, enough to start grabbing yourself a slice of that pie!